Fans dance and groove at the main stage during Saturday's 2nd annual Pacific Festival: OC at Oak Canyon Ranch in Irvine. KELLY A. SWIFT, FOR THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

I don’t doubt that plenty of the several thousand people on hand for Saturday’s second annual Pacific Festival: OC schlepped out to Oak Canyon Ranch near Irvine Lake to take in that bash as a complete experience. “Arrive early, stay late,” the 14-hour event’s website urged, though I wonder just how many patrons (especially an inordinate amount from L.A.) felt it was worth the time and effort to show up before sundown.

No chance was I going to get there much ahead of Nic Offer (above) and !!!'s 5 p.m. set, what with Rodrigo y Gabriela at the Bowl to write up and reviews of the Decemberists and Three Dog Night (how’s that for a dichotomy) to post during the daytime. I pulled up halfway into the band called Chk-Chk-Chk’s set to discover a sizable and growing but far-from-overwhelming crowd milling about, generally and in VIP, with little to do amid the drab setting but seek shade and wait in interminable beer lines.

Gourmet food trucks were plentiful in a siphoned-off corridor, but there couldn’t have been more than three or four beer stands, each with a wait at least 50, sometimes 100 people deep, all standing around to fork over $8 for a one-choice brew. Can’t imagine how backed-up those queues got once Ghostland Observatory, late-as-usual Snoop Dogg and closing act Cut Copy came on as the hours grew wee.

But I knew I wasn’t in this for the long haul before I was anywhere near Santiago Canyon Road. My plans were to criss-cross the county solo: first check out the vibe at Pacific Fest, then zip over to downtown Santa Ana to see Thrice, a month before the O.C. quartet drops its next album, at the newly reopened Yost Theater.

The early evening provided an ideal chance for me to catch up with two new(er) acts, Phantogram and Toro y Moi, both of which I’ve missed repeatedly this year, either at Coachella or more cramped gigs at Detroit Bar, and both of which appeared on the not-much-smaller second stage of five that were erected throughout Oak Canyon.

Those sets alone, exceptional examples of inventive electro-pop and dance-rock that are never less fun for being so brainy, were worth the drive and $10 parking. They capped a stretch of performances – enlivened by !!! but no doubt ratcheted-up in the early afternoon by the Growlers, Afroman and Hanni El Khatib – that made this Pac Fest feel like a welcome reminder of This Ain’t No Picnic, the ultra-chill short-lived indie fest of the ’90s.

That slice of park-life paradise came and went as an enticing antidote to more run-of-the-mill fare at Irvine Lake, like the raucous Hootenanny every Fourth of July weekend. Pacific Fest, like Lightning in a Bottle, is at least an attempt to recapture its spirit; I’d have preferred a deeper lineup to make the satellite stages seem worth the trudge, but more so than the Lightning gathering, this one managed to mesh indie and rave aesthetics fairly complementarily. It isn’t often you find Black Lips pitted against Snoop Dogg, yet sense that both acts are inspiring the crowd to groove out.

I would like to have seen Ghostland’s and Cut Copy’s light show, and I hope for reputation’s sake that they got those P.A. bugs out of their system after event partner Steve Aoki’s troublesome DJ set in the 8 o’clock hour.“Ah, c’mon, you’re killing us out here!” hollered one mad dancer as I walked past. After a solid 20 minutes of the main speakers blowing out, it seemed as though they gave up on a planned teaming of him with Calvin Harris, though I left shortly before 9, so I could be mistaken.

At least by the time I split he had regained momentum, first by leaping atop the crowd to surf it and spray people down with champagne, then by leading a chant-along through Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness,” and finally by getting hard-core with his Travis Barker collaborative track “Misfits.”

The latter, ideal for a double-bill with Passion Pit, came on a little slipshod at first, although I’m guessing a lakeside park in O.C. the day after they played San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival was probably something of a comedown. As it was, it took TyM a good 15-20 minutes to hit their stride.

Once they did, however, they were hip-deep into showing off their versatility, shifting from bursts of Technicolor techno-rock to a psychedelic jangle more melodically and harmonically rich than that of Black Lips. They can come across live as clever and lustrous as MGMT does only on record, with floating voices that would fit right in on a Fleet Foxes disc layered over wistfully bopping ditties.

Yet no sooner were they sounding like primo Zombies or the Shins on a dub kick than they were changing up their approach entirely, digging deep into some French-influenced funk and summoning LCD Soundsystem’s loose-but-tight intensity. Not even massive air-horn blasts out of the nearby SS Shagadelica (another, more poorly attended stage) could drown out the joy put forth by Chazwick Bundick and his South Carolina group.

Coming Monday: Part 2: Thrice at the Yost, plus a report and slide show from Outside Lands 2011.

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